Consumer Reports: Best TV settings for the Super Bowl and Olympics

by Consumer Reports

Out of focus TV LCD set and remote control in man's hand isolated over a white background.

Whether you’re buying a new TV for the big game or planning to watch the Olympics on your current set, you want the best picture possible. Consumer Reports offers some expert tips and tricks to help you get there.

With some major sporting events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics right around the corner, you’ll want to get your TV in picture perfect shape. And, believe it or not, Consumer Reports says that means avoiding the “sports mode” setting. It tends to artificially boost contrast, brightness and colors. And that makes the picture look unnatural. Instead, we suggest using either the movie or cinema mode, which will give you the most natural-looking picture.

Another factory preset mode to avoid if your TV has it: dynamic or vivid. The vivid mode works a lot like the sports mode where it overly brightens the image.

One more trick from the Consumer Reports playbook: turn off noise reduction and motion smoothing. Noise reduction can reduce detail and fine texture in your picture. Motion smoothing can cause film to look like video. Sometimes it’s called the soap opera effect where film starts to look like a daytime TV program.

If you’re looking to adjust your set beyond the factory preset modes, Consumer Reports says take it easy with the sharpness by keeping it near zero. Turning it up too much can make the picture detail look less natural. And for color temperature as well as color and tint, typically you should choose the low or warm setting so that whites don’t look too blue. And with tint what you’re really trying to do is get the most natural-looking flesh tones.